scattered leaves
Hic sine dubio lectores hærebunt multaque comminiscentur quæ moram injiciant et hac de causa ipsos rogo ut lento gradu mecum pergant nec de his judicium ferant donec omnia perlegerint.
Here, doubtless, readers will hesitate, and will urge many objections; and for this reason I beg of them to proceed with me by slow steps, and not to pronounce a judgement on this point until they have read the whole.
The shadow of winter stalks through the trees, slinks through the underbrush, guile apace, as the silence of the wind lifts the fallen leaves in a rolling hush that stammers across the clearing. The lingering tail of summer is a flash of wild brightness in the cloud-spattered sun, a moment of warmth that steps carefully, cautiously, through the tendrils of cold that creep down from the foothills with the dusk. A second’s distraction, caught in the quotidian – a rake’s progress of listless tasks – and one would miss it: the sempiternal substance of the moment’s spell, broken in each instant as soon as it appears. The scrape of rusty tines on gravel binds nature’s notebook in red and gold, while down the street, the blatt-blatt-blättering of a leaf blower holds the winter at bay.